This article reflects my involvement in Indonesia’s Islamic feminist movement through gender training activities in pesantren and a reevaluation of classical texts from a feminist perspective. In these ways, the concept of gender and key elements of equality and justice, such as women’s reproductive rights and political rights, can be widely accepted by the Muslim community. In Egypt, the feminist movement, according to Saba Mahmood, has failed to understand the agency of the fundamentalist women’s movement. But in Indonesia, active collaboration has occurred between secular and Muslim feminists. They opposed the discourse of identity politics and the patriarchal political ideology legitimized by the New Order regime. They built concepts and collective action through pesantren, Islamic universities, and the networks of two Islamic women’s organizations, Fatayat Nahdlatul Ulama and Aisyiyah Muhammadiyah. The convergence of these two streams of feminism is a key strength and essential feature of the Islamic feminist movement in Indonesia.
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